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ESXi on ASUS NUC 14 Pro (Revel Canyon)

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The ASUS NUC 14 Pro (formally known as Revel Canyon) is the first ASUS-based NUC since the acquisition of the NUC Division from Intel last fall. I know many of my readers have been requesting a review of the new ASUS NUCs, but to be honest, it has been pretty difficult to get samples directly from ASUS, which was not the case when I had worked with Intel.

In fact, it was thanks to the folks over at SimplyNUC who was kind enough to provide access to the ASUS NUC 14 Pro, so that I could do a proper review ?

In case you are reading this ASUS, I hope this was simply due to the initial integration of the NUC Division and in the future, getting early samples will be possible to help support our shared community of users.


At first glance, the exterior chassis of the ASUS NUC 14 Pro has minimal changes, it is the same classic 4x4 design that we have all come to love. The only noticeable change is the raised bevel on the top of the chassis and the removal of the etched Intel NUC brand which was located on top.

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ESXi on SimplyNUC Moonstone

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SimplyNUC has been a long time partner/reseller of the popular Intel NUC platform for quite some time but over the past few years, they have expanded their portfolio to include additional 4x4 systems that are completely designed in-house by SimplyNUC include Topaz, Ruby, Cypress and Chapel Rock to just name a few.


Moonstone is the latest 4x4 addition from SimplyNUC, which is an AMD-based kit that includes support for the latest AMD Zen 4 (Phoenix) and Zen 3+ (Rembrandt R) processors. The VMware Community has always been interested in an AMD-based kit but typically they do not work well due to the presence of a Realtek-based network adaptor, where drivers from Realtek does not exists for ESXi.

The first thing that caught my attention when I first heard about Moonstone was that this was an AMD kit that features an Intel-based network adapter as its primary network interface! ?

This definitely took me by surprise, not sure if AMD was making any statements about their networking choices or simply diversifying their networking options? ? Either way, I was not complaining and I thought this might be the first real viable AMD 4x4 candidate, from a VMware perspective, in quite some time.


Thanks to the SimplyNUC team, I did not have to wonder much more and I got the opportunity to put the Moonstone through its paces and see what it can do for the VMware Community!

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